by Meja Mwangi
Kifagio, Jitu, and Nyoka were too happy, and too uneducated, to understand it completely, but Professor shuddered. He felt the frigid wind of change, and it was not a comfortable one. Out of his fear for his future, he offered to accompany Maina on his next foray. Sara shot that idea down.
“Not on your life,” she said harshly. “Maina does not need any of you fools meddling in his business.”
Maina’s new business was a proper business, a respectable business that needed real education and real intelligence. There was no way she would let any of them spoil it for him.
“This is not one of your machete and axe jobs,” she said to them. “You will all stay right here with me and let a real man handle it. Watch and learn, and try to grow, all of you.”
“Baba Chokora will work for us,” Jitu said bitterly to Professor.
Professor smiled sadly, the thin smile of a man who knew when to let go, and instead proposed a toast to Chokora’s success. They drank to that till late.
Maina was in the suburbs before sunrise. He was waiting at the end of the Eastern Retreat, when the milkman came around pulling on his cart. He followed the milkman as he went from house to houses delivering milk. He retrieved the milk that the man delivered and put it in a bag over his shoulder. They got to the end of the street and continued to the Western Close lane. As milk cartons decreased in the milkman’s cart, they increased in Maina’s bag. When they got to the end of the close, Maina ducked in the ditch, and watched the milkman get onto the lorry waiting there for him. The lorry drove away and Maina retrieved the last bottles.
The bag was so heavy he feared it would break as he delivered the milk to his customers on Cedar Avenue. Then he folded his bag and hid it in a bush by the side of the road and went home feeling like a man with a job.
Residents of Cedar Avenue had milk that day. Those on the Retreat and the Close had to make special arrangements for their children get milk that day. Most thought the delivery truck had broken down. Some had heard it pass by in the early hours of the morning. It had happened before that they missed the day’s delivery and received credit on their accounts. This time they receive no credit, and no double delivery the next day, or the next or the next. For a whole week, they received no milk.
At the end of the week, one of them called Riverside Dairies demanding an explanation. The manager called his delivery people and they called their delivery boys and they assured him they had all done their jobs. Then the manager called in his assistant and they put their heads together and discussed it for a while. They decided three heads were better than two and called in the shift foreman. They questioned him for some time and decided to call in the truck driver and his delivery boy. Cats and dogs were discussed too, but none of them had ever heard of a cat or a dog taking off with milk containers without leaving a trail of spilt milk. Quick phone calls confirmed there were no signs of broken milk containers or spilt milk at any of the affected locations.
The manager called the police. No one liked the way the detectives went around the factory asking question, least of all the milkmen who delivered to the affected areas. They questioned them as though they were the suspects.
Early the next morning, two detectives were waiting in a hideout along the Western Close before the delivery lorry arrived. A light drizzle was falling, when they heard it approaching from way off, backfiring and rattling enough to wake the whole street. Then the milkman appeared pushing his cart and started making delivery.
The detectives waited until he had passed their hiding place talking to himself about the cold. They were about to start after him when a second milkman appeared, looking exactly like the first milkman, and started picking up the milk that the other dropped. They waited until he too had passed their hiding place before following him.
They went from gate to gate, until they came to the end of the street. The first milkman, still unaware he was being followed, reached the end of his delivery route, got into the waiting lorry and it drove away. The second milkman collected the last milk container then led the detectives down the street and around the corner, where he started making his deliveries. The case was solved. It was not about a dishonest employee, as originally suspected, but a straightforward case of theft, a felony of the kind policemen dealt with on daily basis.
They followed the bogus milkman down the road, all the time debating what to do with him. Should they arrest him, send him to prison and expect to arrest him again sometime in the future over another moronic one-man crime spree like this one? Or just shoot him and save the trouble? Then, during their whispered discussion, they realised there was a possibility he was part of a bigger picture, a member of a larger, and more dangerous gang, that included some of the customers to whom he delivered the stolen milk. The case would be more interesting, and a whole lot more worthwhile, if they arrested the whole street and charged every resident with the crime of knowingly receiving stolen goods.
Maina was unaware of all that was going on behind him, when he turned into Western Close and continued delivering, his back hunched against the morning drizzle. He was in good spirits, despite the cold. It was his last day as a milk deliveryman. Later that day he would collect the balance for the week’s supply and go reinvent himself in another part of the city.
He had just made the last delivery when two figures stepped out of the shadows.
“Jambo,” said one of them.
Maina immediately realised who they were. He charged forward, dodged round them, and tried to flee. One of the men, reacting fast, whacked him on the back of the head with a baton dropping him in the ditch. He lay on his back looking up at the hazy figures bending over him and thought he was dreaming.
Chapter Ten
The bus that brought him home was an old, familiar monster with broken seats and smoking engine. The driver wrestled with the steering wheel, his cap tilting at an angle, and the old engine spewed clouds of dark smoke. It was the only public transport that braved the dusty road and rocky tracks going up to Ngaini Village, and was always overloaded with farm produce, livestock, and tired men and women.
The passengers neither saw nor cared about the driver or the bus. They just wanted to get home at the end of a long market day and rest. Some stared out of the windows, others were sleeping, and one or two argued with the conductor over how much money they would pay for the luggage.
In the back of the bus sat a young man with torn clothes and a bewildered look on his face. His eyes darted from one face to the next and dropped whenever any of the faces noticed him. He heard them tell stories and laugh. He drew comfort from the language they spoke for understood it.
The bus swam in a fog of dust and exhaust smoke, as it sought and felt its way through the familiar landscape. Through the window, the young man saw hills and landmarks he remembered. Banana fields went by, and maize fields also came and went and occasionally he saw women weeding. Then, lulled by the scenery and the voices around him, he dozed off and slept until the bus jolted to a stop.
“Last stop,” said the driver. “Everyone alight here.”
The bus had reached its final destination. The driver and his assistant would spend the night at the small market town and head back to the city the following morning.
Passengers alighted and the conductors hopped on the luggage carrier to unload their luggage. The young man lingered uncertainly in the back seat, his heart pounding and sweat pouring down his face. His stomach ached too, and he was not sure whether it was the hunger or the anxiety that hurt him so much.
He lingered in the back, cold with apprehension. Deciding to come back home had been the easy part. Lying on the hospital bed, swimming in a soup of broken bones and abandoned dreams, with nothing to do but wallow in remorse and self-pity, it had seemed like the right thing to do. Now sitting in the back of the bus doubt assailed him. Would they recognize him? Would they understand? What would his father think?
“Everyone out,” the driver called out from the doorway.
Everyone was out except the young man. He had to get out of the bus and go home. Slowly and with significant effort, he rose and stretched. He straightened his clothes and passed his hand over his clean-shaven head. Then, walking with a slight limp, and hiding his right hand under his shirt, he crept out of the bus and into the late afternoon air.
“Do not forget your luggage,” said the driver.
The young man had no luggage. He had returned exactly as he had left, with just the dust in his pocket. Most of the passengers had dispersed, gone home to their families to share whatever they had brought back from the city, and only the market women remained, arguing with the bus conductor over unlabelled loads of bananas that they could not decide belonged to which of them.
“Mine is the big one,” one of them said.
“Mine is the ripest,” said another.
“The fat bunch is mine,” another one said.
“No, that is mine.”
“It is mine.”
“Ask the conductor, he knows what I gave him.”
The conductor explained that one bunch of bananas was like any other to him. The women loudly disagreed.
“Would you like to come up here on top of this bus and see?”
The women looked at one another.
“I did not think so,” he said.
The young man tried to walk behind the women, hoping to slip away unnoticed. The last thing he needed was the attention of strangers and their tough questions.
“Are you not the son of so and so?”
“The one who went to school?”
“How is the city?”
“Do you work for the government?”
“Are you a big man now?”
“Where is your big car?”
His stomach hurt so much he walked bent over. He was almost clear of the women when one of them grabbed his hand.
“Come here, you,” she said him. “Help me with this load.”
She had a sack of potatoes she wanted moved from the bus. There was no way he could lift the sack with his maimed hand, so she dropped it, grabbed his good one and set him to work. They carried the basket aside, and without letting go of him his arm, she took him back to the bus and the shouting women.
“Stay here,” she ordered. “You have more work to do.”
The driver and his conductors were both up on the luggage rack deciding which bunch of bananas belonged to which screaming woman.
“They are all green up here,” said the driver to the women.
“Mine’s greener.”
“Mine’s longer.
“The fattest one is mine.”
Driver and conductors exchanged worried glances. Then they took hold of the nearest bunch and heaved it over the side.
“Watch out,” said the driver. “Here it comes.”
The market women scattered and the bananas landed on the ground. While they watched outraged, the driver and his conductor cleared the luggage carrier, tossing everything down in a heap. Then they got down and went off to have their tea. While the women were busy sorting out their luggage, the young man slipped away unnoticed.
He struck out of the market following a path that he well remembered, one that he did not want to travel, and go where it went. He dreaded what lay ahead, what would happen when he met the first person that would recognize him. The moment the dreadful questions would begin.
The sun was about to set, when he arrived at the last fork on the path. The right fork led to the people he had betrayed, and who would not understand or forgive. To the left led round a small wooded hill, past the neighbours’ fields, down a valley, across a stream to the wilderness.
He stood at the fork contemplating the two paths. One led to shame and dishonour, while the other one led to the unknown. He stood there for a long while wrestling with the doubts and the fears.
“Meja?” a small voice called.
He looked down and saw his twelve-year old sister looking up at him. Small for her age, she was dressed in a ragged dress and had no shoes on her feet. Feeling suddenly light- headed, he staggered to the fence and leaned on it.
The girl took his arm.
“They said you would not return,” she said.
He went down on one knee, so that his face was level with hers, and hugged her and kissed her face, and held her in a desperate embrace. He felt her bony ribs, and felt her little heart beat fast and smelt the dust and the wood smoke on her dress. Tears came to his eyes. She pulled away from him.
“I can write,” she said.
She dragged him back to the path, got on her knees and started writing on the dust with her finger. She stopped to read what she had written, wiped it away and started again. Meja stood and watched and wished he could just fade away, disappear like he had never been. His head throbbed to the sound of cowbells from a nearby homestead. Calves cried for their mothers and goats called to their kids. The smell of the fields in need of rain and of wood smoke and cow dung, and that of home and family came at him from every direction.
“There,” said the girl, eyes wide with excitement.
He stared at the writing on the dust.
“What does it say?” he asked her.
“My name,” she said. “I can write my name.”
She said it with immense pride. It was spelt wrong and it made him sadder.
He hugged her.
“Did you bring me?” she asked.
His wracked his brain. He could not think what it she was referring to.
“The necklace,” she said taking his hand again. “You promised me a necklace if I learned to write my name.”
It was a rush promise, made impulsively to a pestering child, and easily forgotten, buried under the avalanche of future reality. Now he remembered and was about to die from the shame. He had promised a lot more things to a lot more people. If their memories were as clear as his little sister’s, he was in more trouble than he had imagined.
She tagged his hand.
“Did you bring it?”
He could not find the words.
“Who is home?” he asked her.
He could just make out his mother’s hut in the banana gardens that surrounded it. Smoke was rising from the roof.
“Mother,” she said. “Father went to borrow money for books. He said, if I read and write, I can come stay with you and get a job. I can write your name too, see?”
She let go of his hand and started writing on the dust. He watched her write his name, but, it was like a worm had formed the writing on the dust. He corrected it, erasing a letter, and adding two.
“There,” he said.
“Your hand,” she was staring at it horrified. “What happened to your hand?”
He felt suddenly week. He dug his fingers in the dust to steady himself, then remembered and thrust it back in his pocket.
“Your hand,” she could not stop staring at the hand in the pocket.
“Write,” he said. “Write, write, write.”
He looked down at the finger writing on the dust. He remembered how happy she was, how joyful and sad they all were to see him off when he left for the city. And how hopeful they all were that he would come back lift them from the poverty of the countryside.
How could they now understand how hard he had tried, and how terribly he had failed. There was no way they could relate to the years in the backstreets scavenging for everything from food to shelter, the months on a hospital bed, or the months of begging on Main Street, shamefully exposing his deformity to get the fare home.
The girl traced her knowledge on the dust, looking up now and then to see he was watching.
“What happened to your hand?” she asked again.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Does it hurt?”
“No,” he said, “it does not hurt.”
A teardrop landed on the dust next to her writing. She looked up and saw his face screwed tight to stop the tears falling from his eyes.
“Do not cry,” she said.
“It will be all right again.”
His head started hurting. He heard the mob baying for blood, heard the blare of a car horn and, turning suddenly, knocked the girl to the ground. He fell and lay still.
She picked herself up and tried to lift his head.
“Meja!” she cried.
She tried to turn him on his back. She stared at his motionless body, his twisted and scarred hand holding on to the handful of grass he had grabbed trying to steady himself. She turned and ran to the house crying for help.
“He is dead,” she screamed frantic, “Meja is dead.”
By the time she returned with an alarmed household, he was gone. They stood at the fork looking around.
“He was here,” she said.
“Who was here?” they asked.
“Meja,” she said. “He fell there.”
They could just make out the writing on the dust where the girl was pointing. There were signs of something having happened, and the girl was not known to lie, but Meja’s name had been gone from their lips and minds for so long that it was hard to believe her. Then, from where she had written her name on the dust, she picked a silver coin.
“See?” she said. “He left money for my necklace.”
Her mother took the money from her and, not sure what to make of it, led them all silently back to the house. It was not enough for fees, or for books, or even for a necklace, but Meja had left them all that he had brought back from the city.
Chapter Eleven
Darkness fell fast. Clutching his rags against the cold, Meja walked back down the road the bus had come. The bus would not be travelling back to the city before morning, but that was not his problem. Without fare back, he had no choice but to start walking.
It was a cloudless night. The sky was wide and the stars were many. A light wind blew from the hills, a cold and dry wind, and there was no hiding from it. It was twelve miles of darkness back to the highway. From there he could head north into the unknown, or head south back to the slightly familiar; the city and all its trials.